Don’t blame S.F. sanctuary city law for suspected killer’s release

FILE - In this Tuesday, July 7, 2015 file photo, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, right, is lead into the courtroom by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, left, and Assistant District Attorney Diana Garciaor, center, for his arraignment at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco. More than 1,800 immigrants that the federal government wanted to deport were nevertheless released from local jails and later re-arrested for various crimes, according to a government report released Monday, July 13, 2015. The controversy was re-ignited after 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was shot to death while walking on a San Francisco pier and authorities arrested suspect Lopez-Sanchez, who was released from jail in April even though immigration officials had lodged a detainer to try to deport him from the country for a sixth time. (Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool, File) less

FILE - In this Tuesday, July 7, 2015 file photo, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, right, is lead into the courtroom by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, left, and Assistant District Attorney Diana ... more

Photo: Michael Macor, San Francisco Chronicle

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Kathryn Steinle

Kathryn Steinle

Photo: Handout Photo

Don’t blame S.F. sanctuary city law for suspected killer’s release

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Don’t blame San Francisco’s sanctuary city law for the release of Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez from jail. That 1989 law, while restricting communications between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, allows for notification of federal officials before criminal suspects are freed in certain cases.

That clause could have been invoked in the case of Lopez-Sanchez, a felon who had been deported to Mexico five times, had just spent 46 months in federal detention, and was ready to be sent back again.

“No question about it — he should have been deported,” Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi told me in an interview Thursday.

So why was Lopez-Sanchez, charged in the fatal shooting of 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle as she was strolling on Pier 14 on July 1, turned loose by the Sheriff’s Department in April without a courtesy heads up to federal authorities?

It comes down to Mirkarimi’s interpretation of the city’s 2013 Due Process for All law, which severely limited the authority of the sheriff to honor requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold suspects up to 48 hours beyond their scheduled jail release. Only inmates convicted of a violent felony within the past seven years and facing a current charge for a violent felony can be considered for detainment at ICE’s request.

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Lopez-Sanchez, who had no violent crimes on his record, obviously did not meet that high threshold. Still, there was nothing in the plain letter of San Francisco law to prevent the sheriff from notifying ICE before the inmate’s scheduled release that he was about to be freed. In fact, the sanctuary city law expressly permits collaboration “to protect public safety.”

But the sheriff’s policy, as outlined in a March 13 memo to all personnel, went further than any law on the books in prohibiting communication with ICE. Mirkarimi said he had been frustrated with his efforts to get clarification from City Hall on how Due Process for All should be applied in day-to-day situations, so he decided to err on the side of what he understood to be the spirit of the law.

“As it stands now, it’s cleaner not to provide notification, which, by all accounts in practice, is detainment,” he said.

Which forces the question: What happens the next time an inmate with Lopez-Sanchez’s profile — long, albeit nonviolent criminal history, deportation pending — is handed over to the city to resolve an outstanding warrant? Will he, too, be released?

In a letter to Lee, Mirkarimi called for an “open and honest conversation” about the intent and practical effect of the law the mayor signed, after a unanimous Board of Supervisors vote, in 2013.

I pressed the elected sheriff for his view: Does he believe he should have the discretion to notify federal authorities in such instances?

“Sure. Absolutely,” Mirkarimi said. “I would be more than happy to take the power of notification and that discretion, but I want to see it legislated. Because I think it will help resolve the ambiguity and the subjectivity and the arbitrariness of who it is we’re notifying on and who it is we’re not.”

The template for such a commonsense amendment to Due Process for All can be found in the sanctuary city ordinance itself. Surely the mayor and a majority of supervisors can summon the fortitude to ensure that the very practical and humane reasons for keeping local law agencies out of the immigration enforcement business — a federal responsibility — can be balanced with reasonable exceptions to protect public safety.

Such an adjustment was made during the mayoral tenure of Gavin Newsom when it was discovered that the city’s juvenile court system was flying Hondurans convicted of drug dealing back to their home country without contacting ICE. Newsom stopped the practice.

As much as Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News like to chastise sanctuary cities as a menace to society, the fact is that they can be of great benefit to public safety, as prosecutors and police chiefs in many of the 300 cities and counties that have such laws can attest.

“This is not just some quirky San Francisco thing,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener, citing similar laws in decidedly conservative areas.

Immigrants are more likely to come forward as witnesses or victims of crime when they are assured that doing so will not lead to their deportation. On a humane level, it makes no sense for local authorities to facilitate the tearing apart of families by deporting a father or mother who is no threat to public safety.

Millions of immigrants without documentation are living and working among us, the result of an economy that relies on their cheap labor, and federal laws that have yet to be aligned with that reality.

Yes, the death of Kathryn Steinle was horrific, heartbreaking, senseless — and cause to assess which policies or bureaucratic blunders might have allowed Lopez-Sanchez to be at Pier 14 that summer evening. The answer is not a draconian Kate’s Law, as O’Reilly has proposed, which would mandate long prison sentences for immigrants who re-enter the U.S. illegally, without consideration of their relative threat.

The simpler and more sensible remedy is to make plain, in city law, that the sheriff has the authority to pick up the phone in the interest of public safety.

underscores some of the failings of politics and law enforcement in San Francisco. Among them:

Policy confusion

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said he had no choice under the city’s 2013 Due Process for All law but to release Lopez-Sanchez without giving advance notice to federal authorities. Mayor Ed Lee, among others, blames the sheriff for a misreading of city law. The sheriff blames the feds for having Lopez-Sanchez sent to San Francisco to face a 20-year-old warrant of possessing marijuana for sale — and then failing to take the initiative of retrieving him when the district attorney declined to prosecute.

Stolen gun

The gun linked to Steinle’s killing had been stolen just four days before the shooting from a car belonging to a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger. San Francisco police had not even assigned an investigator to look into the theft before the homicide on Pier 14. Another question: Why was the ranger’s gun left unsecured in the vehicle?

Bad communication

The problems go beyond the sheriff’s refusal to communicate with federal immigration authorities. The conflicting interpretations of Due Process for All underscore the confusion and public safety issues that can arise from the sheriff’s strained relations with the mayor, the district attorney and other key city officials.